Global warming alarmists get my vote as the funniest people in America. Not even falling temperatures and growing arctic ice can dampen their quest to stop global warming.
Global warming activists stormed Washington Monday for what was billed as the nation's largest act of civil disobedience to fight climate change -- only to see the nation's capital virtually shut down by a major winter storm.
Schools and businesses were shuttered, lawmakers cancelled numerous appearances and the city came to a virtual standstill as Washington was blasted with its heaviest snowfall of the winter.
It spelled about six inches of trouble for global warming activists who had hoped to swarm the Capitol by the thousands in an effort to force the government to close the Capitol Power Plant, which heats and cools a number of government buildings, including the Supreme Court and the Capitol...
One protester named Kat had planned to get arrested and be bailed out Monday but decided to stay put and donate her money to a good cause instead.
"I don't want to travel in the snow today. However, I am donating my bail money to fight mountaintop removal," she wrote to the Climate Action Web site.
Read the whole story HERE.
I am so glad that Kat is finding a way to fight the removal of mountaintops. I have not yet decided what I am going to do with my bail money. Any ideas?
23 comments:
Well, there is a reputable (and cause worthy) foundation for the preservation of sea horses. Perhaps you and your family might adopt a few. Personally, we've invested in a small unicorn preservation non-prof. It just makes us feel as though we're doing our part.
If I had known about the unicorn preservation fund I wouldn't have given all my money to the "Save the Leprechauns Yes We Can" Fund.
Maybe they could move some of the mountaintops to Kansas – we need them.
I did find this rather humorous...protesting global warming in blizzard conditions...but (to make a non-humorous point) there is a difference between weather and global climate change which are often confused...the evidence for global climate change is overwhelming...the real debate in the scientific community is not whether it is happening but why.
Mike,
No doubt about it. Global temperatures fluctuate. They always have. For instance, global tempuratures rose in the 16th century. They fell in the 18th century which has been referred to as "the little ice age." Right now it appears that global temperatures are actually falling slightly.
What is outrageous is the left's attempt to manufacture a crisis (man-made global warming) in order to move us closer to socialism. Make no mistake, the radical environmental movement is committed to universal socialism (or outright communism). It is a political movement which has received no critical evaluation from their friends in the press.
When I was in school our teachers terrified us with apocalyptic tales of the soon coming ice age. Now our teachers are frightening our kids with the lie of man-made global warming and sending them home with assignments to guilt their parents into reducing their "carbon footprint."
Interestingly, more and more activists are beginning to use the phrase "climate change" instead of "global warming" because evidence is piling up that global temps are actually falling.
Todd, you nailed it. Unless these scientists can prolong their lives for several decades, their science will have little value to the questions at hand.
In the meantime, those who are clear-thinking and haven't lost their heads must make adult decisions on how to continue to live on the planet with finite resources - and to do so with as little adverse impact on the planet as we know how.
I say shut the plant down - today. I'll bet we'd have a bigger rally on the capitol steps tomorrow - and Pelosi would probably not be on the agenda I'm guessing.
"...the radical environmental movement is committed to universal socialism (or outright communism). It is a political movement which has received no critical evaluation from their friends in the press."
I have not considered this point....I have to think about it.
One of the things environmental activist groups oppose is private ownership of property which is a cornerstone of liberty. They are committed to collective, or government ownership of property. This destroys individual liberty and forces citizens to be tenents of the state.
Todd, that's one of the most remarkable assertions I've come across. While I wouldn't be surprised if some extremists advocate this, it seems about as fair as saying all gun-rights activists think eveyone should have 50-caliber machine guns at home.
I believe there is a lot of validity in Todd’s assertion about political leaders across the globe. I don’t think when he makes such an assertion he is saying that this is 100% true in every case – but in general this seems to be an underlying theme. But, I think you have two forces in action here - the leadership on the one hand and the “masses” on the other. I think the driver for the mass of folks – those who blindly and uncritically support anything “green” – is quite different. I think when a person is stripped of hope in anything but the here and now (secularist/humanist/naturalist society we live in) then this is a logical outlet for their devotion and sense of purpose. The human soul longs for truth and meaning and it will create it even when the real truth is absent. It is no wonder that Marx, Lenin, et al understood that Christianity must first be abolished before their vision could be realized. They understood if they could eliminate the real hope of man, they could replace it with a misplaced hope in the here and now – a hope built on a flawed sense of fairness and justice. Today there exists a propaganda machine the likes of which Marx could have never imagined – public schools, universities, media, etc…
It is a sad thing to see such utter confusion in our nation.
The propaganda regarding man-made global warming is breathtaking. The disseninting voices within the scientific community are almost competely shut out even though their numbers are growing.
No, not everyone who is involved in the environmental movement is a socialist. Indeed, I want clean air and clean water. I think national parks are a good thing. We must be responsible stewards of God's creation.
But the activist organizations that hold dogmatically to the assertion that humans are raising the earth's temperature are, as far as I know, uniformly socialist. Part of their agenda is the curtailing or repealing of private property ownership.
Some have taken global temperature statistics as an excuse to promote their own unrelated agendas, as Todd has pointed out. However, there is a much less ludicrous view of climate change that seems to have been overlooked.
This and this are graphs showing recent (by geological standards) trends in global temperature from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA, respectively. Both show a noticeable rise in temperature during the past hundred years including a pronounced spike during the past four decades. These data come from reputable sources (last time I checked, the NOAA and NASA were not devoted to abolishing property rights for Americans), so the figures themselves are not in question. What IS in question are the conclusions drawn from them, and one can certainly draw a number of different conclusions.
One such conclusion is that we should all be communists and live in a giant hut run by the government. This view is, of course, both silly and unrelated to climate, and well-deserving of some good-natured scorn.
However, another (vastly more widely-held) view is that we MAY have caused the rise in temperature, and therefore we MAY be able to abate it before it reaches a point of having a significant adverse worldwide impact.
"Greenhouse gases" causing a temperature rise is a theory. Natural fluctuation is another theory. The problem is that if the first theory is correct, then not only could we cause a future catastrophe, but we might have conceivably prevented it. If this theory turns out to be false and the global temperature corrects itself naturally, I don't think the scientific community would be disappointed that they were wrong. Rather, I suspect they would be quite relieved. However, until we know what the truth is (and only time will tell), many people are following the logic of "better safe than sorry". To equate such people with extremists who would use any issue to promote such a consistently problem-ridden social framework as communism simply does not make sense.
Engaging in a discussion by citing (not just mentioning) overlooked data, ignored papers by dissenting scientists, etc. would be helpful and could win people's minds. Making snide remarks about unicorns and sea horses (while poking fun at the decidedly small percentage of environmentalists who are "extreme cases") completely alienates the rest of environmentalists who are NOT extremists, many of whom are Christians who are environmentalists for Biblical reasons.
P.S. I second Mike's comment that it IS pretty funny that it snowed like crazy on the day of the protest. :)
Dave,
I make a distinction between people who want to be responsible stewards of God's creation and loony activists who see the "climate crisis" as an opportunity to further global socialism. Go to their web pages (as I have) and listen to their speeches (as I have) and you will find a very clear nexus between the left-wing environmental and a host of troubling political causes.
There is thousands of years of history from core sample studies, etc. that demonstrate that global temperatures fluctuate. Heck, solar flares and volcanic erruptions effect global tempertautres.
I would also quibble a bit with your statement that the data concerning global temperatures are beyond dispute. One of the worst things we can do for science is not dispute the findings of scientists. There is FAR from monolithic agreement among scientists on this issue. There is also disagreement as to how these measurements ought to be taken.
There are some pretty significant holes beginning to develop in the man-made global warming orthodoxy. I have a suspicion that there will be some very embarrassed scientists in the near future. Of course I was told once on this blog that global cooling is caused by global warming. So who knows?
If global temps have been rising for four decades then why were we being warned about a coming ice age just thirty years ago?
Dave Rogel,
None of these questions are rhetorical, just so you know.
However, another (vastly more widely-held) view is that we MAY have caused the rise in temperature...
Well, these graphs say otherwise. Now what?
I don't think the scientific community would be disappointed that they were wrong. Rather, I suspect they would be quite relieved...
Does being a scientist make one immune from pride and ideological blindness?
many people are following the logic of "better safe than sorry"...
There's nothing inherently noble about this logic. IF the claim turns out to be false, that's a hollow rationalization for leading people into falsehood. Let's focus on being Biblical rather than "safe" or "sorry." And yes, I recognize that this very subject involves a debate about what that means.
Making snide remarks about unicorns and sea horses (while poking fun at the decidedly small percentage of environmentalists who are "extreme cases")...
What is your empirical basis for claiming that "Dark Green" environmentalism constitutes a "decidedly small percentage of environmentalists"? And if Todd makes that distinction in the future, does he get a pass?
When you use the term "environmentalism," is it a synonym for "stewardship"? Or something else?
Dave –
In response to “so the figures themselves are not in question…”
That couldn’t be further from the truth. The figures are very much the question. I don’t care who is claiming the number. It is a fact that, the older the data is, the less the researcher can know about that data. In fact there is much scientific review out there on problems with the data. For example, a temperature station located in the vicinity of large concrete structures (of which we have many more since mid last century) can cause near-ground temps to be higher and give the impression of higher air temps.
And, the conclusions based on the data are very much in question. Take Gore’s bunch, for example. His infamous “hockey stick” graph is just one example of bad science that was trotted out by his political-scientific coalition to scare the world into following his lead. This article, published in an MIT tech review, describes the issue well.
http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/13830/
The author of this article seems to believe that likely man has had some affect on the climate. But he has one of the more intellectually honest (and truly scientific) stances on our epistemological reality than the scientists that are feeding Gore’s machine and making outlandish predictions. I’m not saying that proves anything one way or the other on the issue, but it should raise eyebrows, especially since it is basically undisputed. And there much more political intrigue to the story that is very interesting but I don’t want to go on too long. Unfortunately, the media has never run a story on the scandal to inform the people or ever presented ANY scientific opinion that dissents from Gore. Why is that? Where is this great debate we’re all supposed to be engaged in? It doesn’t exist.
A few wacky Dark Green groups are trying to "lead people into falsehood". The rest of the environmental movement is simply trying to "lead people into... " putting less smoke into the air. And, yes, I think that such a distinction is tremendously important. The reason for such a distinction is that a moderate person (I include myself) could look at the graph and article threegirldad and Harley provided (thanks, by the way!) and get a fresh perspective on things. I imagine there are many more bits of scientific data and analysis that also provide conclusions other than “global warming”. I (and all reasonable, open-minded people) welcome such information, not so that we can tear them down (as though we were in a High School debate where there is no option for changing our minds), but so that our viewpoint, if erroneous, can be corrected. Links to information, graphs, etc., are helpful and will convince people of a viewpoint. (This discussion has already been informative to me, but many readers would not have made it past the first two comments. That’s a shame, and kind of my point. Scoffing at people only creates polarization. Perhaps my real issue was one of tone more than content.)
As I've already said (perhaps hypocritically), I think that the Dark Green folks are maybe deserving of a bit of scoffing, but making jokes about endangered species does not make sense to me. Protecting endangered species has nothing to do with communism and everything to do with preserving precious, beautiful creations of God. Why is that funny?
(If I may preemptively answer a response the above paragraph is sure to receive, I would say that poking fun at a person who, say, cherishes a seahorse, but not a human life would be perfectly appropriate, as there is a clear double standard. However, simply mocking the protection of rare creatures for a cheap laugh is off-putting to many people.)
Regarding scientists, I should not have spoken for them. I will say that most "lay people" would certainly be happy for temperatures to remain within a non-problematic range, regardless of why. With scientists, reactions might be more varied from individual to individual.
Dave,
First of all thanks for weighing in. You are a kind person.
Second, the first two comments are not mocking endangered species. I just thought it was kind of funny. The point of the first two comments were merely to illustrate that we often times find the claims of "the dark greens" to be fanciful at best. Sometimes satire is the best way to illustrate this. The things Kat said in the article made me laugh - not in a mean way but because it sounded like an SNL parody.
I like animals. I have two pets who are fat and happy. Also, there are many other animals that are quite tasty. I like them too.
Dave,
First of all thanks for weighing in. You are a kind person.
Second, the first two comments are not mocking endangered species. I just thought it was kind of funny. The point of the first two comments were merely to illustrate that we often times find the claims of "the dark greens" to be fanciful at best. Sometimes satire is the best way to illustrate this. The things Kat said in the article made me laugh - not in a mean way but because it sounded like an SNL parody.
I like animals. I have two pets who are fat and happy. Also, there are many other animals that are quite tasty. I like them too.
Not to belabor the point but...
There are many others who find it "off putting" when there are more laws protecting sea horses and snail darters than there are protecting unborn babies. We're over 50 million now.
For many of us that makes detailed discussions of endangered species take a distant back seat. At some point we have to do a little moral triage.
A few wacky Dark Green groups are trying to "lead people into falsehood".
In the same way that you say you find links to graphs and data helpful, I would find it helpful if you substantiated the "few" aspect of this claim in some way. At the moment, I'm skeptical.
The rest of the environmental movement is simply trying to "lead people into... " putting less smoke into the air.
Same issue as above. I simply don't buy the assertion that all environmentalists except for "Dark Greens" have the exact same goals, motives, philosophy of ecology, etc. There are too many people where I live who, while not promoting a socialist agenda, are nonetheless pretty passionate about a good deal more than what you say here.
I'm also still curious to know if environmentalism for you is essentially the same thing as Biblical stewardship, or if you mean something else by it.
Protecting endangered species has nothing to do with communism and everything to do with preserving precious, beautiful creations of God.
See: as a blanket statement, this just doesn't add up. I accept that it's your view, but I deal with people all the time who insist (and pretty loudly) that protecting endangered species is a moral obligation on the grounds that these creatures "were here long before us," that they "have equal rights," and so forth. There's not a single mention of God, nor the least pretense of them being His creation, either.
If Biblical stewardship obligates us to protect endangered species, to what extent does it do so? Any extent whatsoever? What role, if any, does the concept of having dominion play in the discussion?
Post a Comment